This invention generally relates to electronic systems and in particular it relates to electrostatic discharge (ESD) protection.
Achieving latch-up-free ESD protection (with minimum trigger voltage) for a pin when the only components available (including NPN transistors) individually snapback below the pin""s operation voltage has been a problem in the prior art. Prior art high-voltage ESD circuits rely on stacking lower voltage 2-terminal ESD circuits. For these prior art devices, the trigger voltage of the total circuit is the sum of the individual circuit trigger voltages.
An electrostatic discharge protection circuit includes: at least two bipolar transistors coupled in series; a top one of the at least two bipolar transistors coupled to a protected node; a bottom one of the at least two bipolar transistors coupled to a common node; at least two resistors coupled in series; each of the at least two resistors is coupled to a corresponding base of one of the at least two bipolar transistors; and a bottom one of the at least two resistors coupled between a base of the bottom one of the at least two bipolar transistors and the common node.